No wine is more suitable to sip before this week's Paul Anka concert than merlot. Merlot and Paul Anka go hand in hand; both are schmaltzy, crowd-pleasing and prolific. Anka has recorded about 900 tunes and merlot is grown in more than 900 vineyards around the world.
The life of a ubiquitous crowd-pleaser isn't always smooth sailing. Anka took a beating in the 1970s for his extreme sentimentality - who can forget (You're) Having my Baby? Now it's merlot's turn to take a hiding. Unduly maligned in hit movie Sideways, merlot sales have plummeted in the United States. The main character in the film, a perfervid wine snob called Miles, derides merlot by saying, 'If anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving. I am not drinking any f****** merlot.' Ironically, the most treasured bottle in Miles' collection, a 1961 Cheval Blanc, is 39 per cent merlot. It just doesn't say so on the bottle. The other main variety in Cheval Blanc is cabernet franc (57 per cent) - a grape Miles also slanders.
Merlot is a variety easily confused with cabernet sauvignon, though when grown in warm climates, it produces a softer, gentler wine. Merlot is at its classic best in Bordeaux's right bank vineyards Pomerol and St Emilion, where it produces famed brands Chateau Petrus, Le Pin, Angelus and Figeac, among others. When ripe and in its youth, merlot is redolent with blackberry, cassis, plum and chocolate flavours. In older merlot vintages, leather and black truffle characters emerge. One reason for merlot's success is that, unlike cabernet sauvignon, most commercial merlot needs little time in the bottle before becoming drinkable. You might say it gets all the bottle age it needs on the way home from the shop.
Anka was a teen idol in the 1950s and 60s. Merlot's big break was in 1991, when an episode of American current affairs show 60 Minutes featured 'The French Paradox'. The news programme revealed the French consume high quantities of foie gras and cheese, but they have far less instances of heart disease than do Americans. France's healthy arteries were linked to the French penchant for red wine with meals. Consumption of red wine quadrupled within the year and merlot shot up the charts.
So why does merlot have such a dicey reputation now? New wine drinkers found merlot, in its easy-listening manifestation, an attractive glass of wine. Merlot's perceived weakness - its propensity to have soft textures - became its finest feature. Merlot became too popular for its own good. Everybody planted it. And winemakers catered to the easy-listening crowd, using viticulture and winemaking techniques to amplify the wine's soft character.
